What a final night for baseball’s regular season

One of the most incredible finales to the regular season in Major League Baseball history played out in dramatic fashion, and ESPN had it covered. For all the complaints — a lot of them justified — about the four-lettered monster, has there ever been a network better equipped to handle such a moment than ESPN?

Faced with both wild-card races tied and coming down to Wednesday night’s game, ESPN focused on the American League, and ESPN2 had the National League covered. Ironically, the game that started the latest — St. Louis at Houston, 8 p.m. — ended the earliest with an 8-0 Cardinals rout.

The other three games started at 7 p.m. and ran past midnight.

The Atlanta Braves blew a 3-2 lead in the ninth and eventually lost to the Philadelphia in 13 innings, 4-3. The Cardinals advanced to the playoffs.

In the American League, while the Boston at Baltimore endured a seventh-inning rain delay, the Tampa Bay Rays put up a six-spot against the New York Yankees in the eighth inning to nearly erase a 7-0 deficit. The Rays completed the comeback on Dan Johnson’s game-tying, two-out homer in the ninth.

In Baltimore, the Red Sox nursed a 3-2 lead with two outs and none on in the bottom of the ninth. Jonathan Papelbon gave up back-to-back doubles to Chris Davis and Nolan Reimold, tying the game. Then Robert Andino hit a single to left that Carl Crawford couldn’t handle, and the Red Sox had lost.

Now the Rays, who had gone into the bottom of the 12th against the Yankees, needed only a run to make the playoffs. Evan Longoria supplied it with one of the shortest home runs in the history of Tropicana Field. His line drive barely cleared the 315-foot sign, sneaking just inside the foul pole, at 12:06 a.m.

ESPN had every play. Unfortunately, the network now steps aside for the postseason as TBS takes over.

8 Responses

I’m not even a big baseball fan (the time wasted between pitches is nearly unbearable); but I was glued last night & my remote was given a heavy workout changing channels after every pitch. Awesome job by ESPN, Yes & MLB net. Those game endings will be hard to top.

ESPN? Why bother? MLB Network was the place to be last night. They did a super job of switching from game to game and they didn’t clutter up their screen with non baseball news. Their full time baseball analysts were as excited as kids on Christmas morning.

Gotta give Micheal Kay credit. He reflected the excitement of the Rays-Yankees last night in a non partisan way. Great Job!

What a night indeed. I was watching the Red Sox game on my TV and had the Braves game running on my laptop with MLB.TV. And obviously watched the Yankees game when Tampa made their comeback. Hopefully the postseason is as exciting as the last week of the regular season was.

Best of all Longoria’s game-winning home run gave me the run and RBI I needed to win one of my fantasy leagues which, as an Astros fan, was the highlight of the season for me.

I was following the local announcers on radio in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and Philly. Amazing montage of events and reactions. Almost mystical the way the final month and final night played out. Ending of course at midnight. With the Bambino walking into Camden Yards.

As a New York Baseball fan, I try to make nice, but it’s ever fascinating to watch those one-strike-left dancing Boston fans transform once again into zombies.
Babe, and Bucky, and Buckner, and Boonie, and Baltimore……oh my.

If MLB had a second wild-card team in each league, Wednesday’s games would have only determined home-field for the wild-card games. I prefer making the Division Series a best-of-seven over a second wild-card team in each league.